Doors Made In Heaven – By Chinedu C. Ekeke

Dr. Eugene Juwah, Executive Vice Chairman, NCCThe Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) will be spending N75 million this year to replace old toilet doors, locks, repainting of fading walls and provision of directional sign posts to the Commission’s waiting room and canteen. And then some enemies who will never see anything good in the Nigerian government – or any of its agencies or parastatals – have already begun crying wolf. One of such enemies of good things is Oyetunde Ojo, the Chairman of the House Committee on Communication. He was surprised that such an obscene amount was budgeted by a government agency for the replacement of just toilet doors and their locks and keys. His maze was even compounded by the fact that the budget was proposed after an allocation of N28 million was made for the same purpose in the budget of last year. Plus, in the 2011 budget, the Commission had proposed N60 million for automation and changing of all access doors of its head office building in Abuja.

Poor Oyetunji Ojo, he needs some tutorial on how to appreciate budgets. And that I’ll give the honourable lawmaker here and now.

For a Commission as strategic as NCC, toilets are critical to their operations, and in such high-profile toilets, entrance and exit cannot be left to chance. This is where doors, and the need to replace them, come in. In a bid to give the nation their best, those who work in NCC need to constantly visit the toilet, either to poo or wee. For some people, inspiration comes from the toilet. And while on the toilet seat, NCC officials brainstorm on how to reduce the high cost of call tariffs and network congestion. To achieve these noble objectives, the NCC management went on a voyage to that realm where doors won’t be prone to rust.

And where else can they get such doors than Heaven, the sphere of perfection? The existing ones that are due for replacement – after just one year – must have been bought from the United States, UK or any of the other countries which, in our clime, is ranked next to heaven. We couldn’t have dared use doors made of Nigerian woods. If those made abroad could not last beyond one year, then those made of Nigerian woods can’t last beyond two months. A good administrator thinks in terms of conserving resources. Part of this is to spend once, buy assets which will last for the organization, and go home relaxed.
You see why we need to quaff expensive champagnes for Dr Eugene Juwah – the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NCC – and his management team? They thought about getting the best, and they will be getting the perfect doors from heaven.

Contrary to the hoopla in the media, N75 million for doors made in heaven isn’t exorbitant. Actually, the House of Representatives has a moral and fiscal obligation to jerk up that provision. A door in heaven is made of gold, and an ounce of gold, in heavenly currency, isn’t at par with an unsubsidized litre of Nigeria’s petrol. So, why the hoopla?

Has the House of Representatives Committee on Communication considered the cost of flying to heaven? Have they also considered the distance? Have they considered the number of NCC officials who’ll be involved in the journey for the procurement of these doors?

When they arrive heaven, they’ll need to move around, from St Joseph’s Boulevard to St John’s Gate, and from St Peter’s Estate to Mother Mary’s Avenue. And to move about in heaven, NCC officials won’t need their Jeeps or Limousines. Those aren’t in use in heaven. They’ll need golden wings with which to fly around. And these golden wings will be designed according to their sizes, built to fit and hung on their backs at exorbitant prices. It is for their own sense of sacrifice that they even didn’t include these costs in the budget. They’ll be taking the trouble to source for these funds from their pockets. What have they done wrong? Why on earth are Nigerians ungrateful?

And there is the cost of ferrying the angels who’ll fix the doors back to Nigeria. The enemies of NCC mischievously avoided a mention of this. Apart from transporting them to Nigeria and back to heaven, we have the angels’ service charge to pay. And if you know how much it costs multinationals to maintain their expatriates from the United States, India, China, Germany, Italy and elsewhere in the world, then you’ll appreciate how much it’ll cost NCC to hire the services of angels from heaven to earth. That is money; real money! Is this too difficult to understand?

And Oyetunde Ojo continued in his bad belle, raising an alarm unnecessarily over the budget proposal of N25 million as legal fees for a lawyer purportedly drafting a bill, which he said was already before the House and sponsored by a member. The Honourable Chairman doesn’t understand that the bill has to be redrafted to include how the heaven-made doors will be used, and the penalties that should face whoever gets them damaged again. And only a lawyer in heaven can handle that. It must be in the heavenly chambers of St Gani Fawehinmi who wouldn’t – for any reason whatsoever – draft that bill without collecting heavy amount of money.

The NCC fraud proposal – christened budget – underscores what I have always said about the organized scam called Nigeria. The most important job those who run our affairs do in their high offices is sitting down to plot how to defraud us. And in spite of the quality time they dedicate to their fraudulent plots, you still don’t find any jot of sophistication in their designs. They conjure up figures and submit for our approval. They dismiss all of us, again without bothering themselves to think it twice, as some bunch of retards who think the moon is made of cheese. Otherwise why would the same NCC make a budgetary provision of N30 million for the replacement of old furniture in spite of an allocation of N25 million for the same purpose last year; or N10 million budget for replacement of air conditioners despite an allocation of N10 million in 2011 for same item?

But it isn’t just about the NCC. They learnt how to prepare their proposal of fraud from the presidency, the certified headquarters of everything that is opaque in budget preparation. It is there that N1 billion was set aside for just food in just one year.

Nigerians have long got accustomed to absurdities and even more absurdities. Wasn’t it in this country that a government official opened a Facebook account – which is free everywhere in the world – with N1.2 million? But what is that amount compared to the value of 24 million liters of fuel –per day -which Nigerians never used throughout last year, but for which hundreds of our billions were pocketed by the privileged? In Nigeria, criminality in government is not new. It is the rule. Equally is the official patronage from those who should sanitize the system.

Nobody should bother NCC with our legendary show of ingratitude, please. Not when we know our new set of toilet doors will be imported from heaven – the residence of God, the most powerful, most merciful, and the perfect one.